Police abuse and citizens

[peterbound]

/summon board lawyer

[Lord O' Bones]

Bold is not really conducive to asking questions wanting an actual polite response. Seems more of a rant then asking a question, but I will try to answer it for you.

Why are Walmart staff divided into sales clerks and stockers? Why are soldiers divided into Infantry and Artillery? Why are teachers divided into different grades and subject matters?

Specializations. Detectives handle investigations and get training and equipment to specialize in such. Traffic cops do traffic (enforcement, traffic accidents) and get training and equipment to specialize in such. Patrol cops respond to calls (can be proactive, but usually over-whelmed) and get training and equipment to specialize in such.

Each becomes better at exactly what they do. Same reason any other profession has similar divisions. Do you ask lawyers, "as politely as" you can, "why in the fuck" do they have divisions of criminal law, civil law, environmental law, family law, immigration law, international law, labor law, tax law, when they are lawyers and should, "know every regulation and law"? They are more intelligent and educated then police on average, yet they apparently still benefit from specializing.

Sorry, but when you complain of specializations amongst police because they, "should be equally trained" in all subjects when I can't think of a profession that doesn't specialize, it just seems another case of just trying to find something cops do bad without being realistic or unbiased.

A more accurate analogy would be to ask why a third baseman or outfielder also has to hit. At least I understand the argument to not allow AL pitchers to hit regarding "specialization." But no one is arguing that the very basics of the job should be separated. Then again, I'm a die hard NL fan.

Sturn, I honestly don't know why the tone of your responses to me give me the feeling that you think I'm anti-police. Anyone that's been here a while would probably tell you otherwise. Maybe your reaction to my questions are telling in and of themselves, despite my crass language.

I use foul fucking language, am inquisitive, and thus far not anti-police.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Colorado upheld the idea that they did, indeed, need to enforce the order. And as a state guy, i'm glad they did. However, I can see the issue with not acting on a restraining order. However, I think what most people view as protecting and serving is witnessing a crime, or being notified of a crime (which I know a restraining order violation is) and acting to stop it.

Castle Rock is among the worst I've ever dealt with. Edit: I had a personal story to tell with this, but decided to snip it. Given that some people around here may actually know people in that department, I don't want this ever coming back on the person I know who was abused by them.

[CelticBrennus]

Isn't the goal to have a system where, let's say, if you go in to make a complaint against a cop that assaulted you, you're not making that complaint to someone who at least knows the person fairly well or may even be friends with them?

Should we all review the discussion had here of the video where a woman accuses a officer in court of sexually assaulting her and she is then threatened and arrested by the same cop who assaulted her - and the posters who defended the right of a uniformed sexual predator to threaten and arrest his victim for accusing him?

[peterbound]

Castle Rock is among the worst I've ever dealt with. Edit: I had a personal story to tell with this, but decided to snip it. Given that some people around here may actually know people in that department, I don't want this ever coming back on the person I know who was abused by them.

You've obviously never been 'greenwooded' Worst. Cops. Ever.

[Lord O' Bones]

Should we all review the discussion had here of the video where a woman accuses a officer in court of sexually assaulting her and she is then threatened and arrested by the same cop who assaulted her - and the posters who defended the right of a uniformed sexual predator to threaten and arrest his victim for accusing him?

No. That would be counterproductive. We should look at fixing broken things rather than focusing on malfeasance from the past.

ETA: Or do we want life to be better or just shout things and point?

[Sturn]

I apologize for the long post. Been busy for a couple days.

Most innocent people found guilty have made one horrifying mistake, they at some point spoke to the cops. Never ever ever, under any circumstances speak to the cops if you are involved in a criminal investigation.

I would add one exception. DO talk if you know where some evidence is or who a person is who is the actual suspect, thus clearing you (espcially if the evidence is timely). Don't bother with having your rights read just say, "Frank did the job and his gun is in the trunk of his car", THEN shut up.

You go to the police station and first you will talk to the officer's peers and coworkers who will actively try to discourage you from making a complaint in the first place, to the point of threatening you with arrest.

I've worked as a cop for 20 years and I've never seen this happen. Strange. There are policies that dictate what to do. Is it possible a corrupt cop is doing this without other good cops knowing? Sure. You are applying what a few corrupt police may do to all police in your sentence.

If I come up to a desk sgt and say a cop punched me in the face without provocation or shot my dog or tazed my wife, I want the guy in cuffs by the end of the hour, not a change in his behavior. I don't want the cop working in law enforcement for the rest of his life, which is to begin after his jail term which shall be of an equal length to my own assuming the tables had been reversed.

There's a problem with this paragraph. You need to add, "and there was probable cause that the punch, shooting, or tazing actually happened and was unjustified". Otherwise Tormund you are asking for a person (a cop) to be arrested on solely a verbal accusation without PC. If the police hauled you off to jail because the neighbor that hates you went into the PD and said you shot his dog without provocation when the dog had actually attacked you, you would be pretty pissed off.

I agree that there should be an investigation. If someone called the cops and said that I assaulted them or shot their dog, or tazed their wife, I would be arrested and then the investigation would commence. Is it so bizarre to desire a single standard of justice?

BS. An investigation of some sort would still happen before the arrest unless there was obvious PC from the get go. Unless the reported victim had an Iphone video in his hand showing you do the crime (has PC literally in his hand), we are going to send a cop to get your side of the story and see if there is evidence/witnesses to back up what he is saying before an arrest is made. The only exception I can think of at the moment is mandated domestic violence arrests. A person who has an obvious injury can say a loved one did it to them and there is mandated PC to arrest the loved one already without any further information.

Police officers in the US are under no obligation whatsoever to protect a member of the public against criminals. And yet in the media all I hear are talking heads telling us to lay down the guns and let the brave boys in blue protect us against those nasty gangsters and home invaders. Em no thanks.

You are making a leap of logic. These kind of cases, which date back decades (I can't recall the name of the old one about police can't be sued for failing to protect a liquor store from burglary), protect the police from lawsuits if they fail to stop a crime. The one cited above is just a newer one specifically about restraining orders. It's still old stuff in general. The Supreme Court has said that the police can't rationally stop every crime and so are not liable when a person is a victim of a crime. You are distorting this into saying the police are actually NOT doing their jobs because the law says they can't be sued when they don't. One does not equal the other. Pretty obviously.

I use foul fucking language, am inquisitive, and thus far not anti-police.

Fair enough, I apologize if I went to far, I will try to differentiate better. Some of you guys all sound alike. I must be profiling. :)

[Howdyphillip]

No. That would be counterproductive. We should look at fixing broken things rather than focusing on malfeasance from the past.

ETA: Or do we want life to be better or just shout things and point?

Bonsey, I do have to admit a nefarious pleasure at shouting things and pointing.

[Lord O' Bones]

Bonsey, I do have to admit a nefarious pleasure at shouting things and pointing.

I don't think this is the place to talk about your penis.

[fuseprime]

I'm not trying to derail the current discussion, but here is a story I saw pertaining to a Police Chief in a small town in PA.

The chief of police in Gilberton Borough, Pennsylvania (population 834), is under fire after posting a series of profanity-laced videos that insult liberals, Secretary of State John Kerry and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. And he is in no way apologetic for any of them.

Here's the link: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/24/fu-all-you-libtards-out-there-police-chief-records-explosive-and-vulgar-youtube-rants-should-he-lose-his-job/

Personally, I don't see a big deal because he is filming these in his free time. In fact, Video 2 actually made me laugh hysterically. I can understand why people would be upset with this. Just throwing this story out there to change it up a bit.

[Borsabil]

Hello Mr Pot, I'm Mr. Kettle.

When have I deirected personal insults at anyone on this board? Examples please. Given how foul mouthed and rude you've been to people who disagree with you I find your remark hilarious. Classic transfrence.

[Lily Valley]

any reasonable individual would expect an investigation to occur to determine if the dog needed to be shot or your wife tazed, or if you needed to be punched in the face.

Sometimes these things need to happen. And sometimes they need to happen to you and your dog, or your wife. The need has to be determined. If the officer was acting within his bounds, and performing his job, shit needs to go down.

I might have to frame this. I can also think of a lengthy set of circumstances where a citizen would perform these actions and not get arrested.

So far this thread has really delivered. Gun porn, bad language, and justifiable face-punching.

Edit: Oops, gun porn was another thread. I'll add entertaining anti-liberal tirade for good measure.

[Howdyphillip]

I don't think this is the place to talk about your penis.

I'm talking about Brady's penis, so this is definitely the place to discuss that.

[Borsabil]

Y

ou are making a leap of logic. These kind of cases, which date back decades (I can't recall the name of the old one about police can't be sued for failing to protect a liquor store from burglary), protect the police from lawsuits if they fail to stop a crime. The one cited above is just a newer one specifically about restraining orders. It's still old stuff in general. The Supreme Court has said that the police can't rationally stop every crime and so are not liable when a person is a victim of a crime. You are distorting this into saying the police are actually NOT doing their jobs because the law says they can't be sued when they don't. One does not equal the other. Pretty obviously.

I'm stating what the law of the land is. The perception amongst the public is that should they phone their local PD in the event of say a house break in then the cops are legally bound to come and save them from the bad guys, this is simply not true. I am not saying that the average policeman would walk on by whilst a gangbanger beat up a little old lady, rather I am simply repeating the law of the land, which I note neither you nor anyone else denies.

Btw what you did not mention in your post is why the supreme court denied liability in these cases. The law does not view the police as a 'public protection' service. The law is perfectly clear, the police are given statutory powers of criminal investigation and arrest to solve crimes and maintain public order, and that is all.

[awesome possum]

There aren't enough actual stories to talk about, so today I present the bargain bin. Pick your police abuse/crooked cop story for the low low price of nothing:

1) A cop in Camden admits to framing 185 innocent people

2) The owner of a smoke shop was arrested on drug charges, and then cleared of charges when his surveillance cameras showed a police informant (used in several other drug cases) planting cocaine in his store that the cops used to arrest him.

Andrews is the owner of Dabb City Smoke Shop in Scotia, a store that sells pipes, T-shirts, hookahs, incense, ashtrays and other items. He was accused of selling cocaine to the undercover informant twice in late March. His shop was then raided in early April, and he was arrested.

He spent the weekend in jail before he could come up with the $30,000 bond. When he realized what he was being accused of, he had investigators examine his surveillance system, which was among the items seized in the raid.

When they did, the charges against Andrews were dropped and the informant himself was sought on drug and perjury charges. The informant, who is not being identified, remains at large.

3) A woman was pulled over and arrested for having prescription drugs in her car. When she was released she discovered that nude pictures and videos of herself had been sent to the arresting police officer's phone. Classy!

4) And Sturn is right, not all cops are bad. The good ones just get fired when they complain about the system, like this guy who was fired for speaking out against arrest and ticket quotas.

“When I first heard about the quotas I was appalled,” says former Auburn police officer Justin Hanners, who claims he and other cops were given directives to hassle, ticket, or arrest specific numbers of residents per shift. “I got into law enforcement to serve and protect, not be a bully.”

Hanners blew the whistle on the department’s tactics and was eventually fired for refusing to comply and keep quiet. He says that each officer was required to make 100 contacts each month, which included tickets, arrests, field interviews, and warnings. This equates to 72,000 contacts a year in a 50,000 person town. His claims are backed up by audio recordings of his superiors he made. The Auburn police department declined requests to be interviewed for this story.

5) A thread on a law enforcement forum where some cops complain about how one of their peers gave another peer a ticket for speeding and how that's RIDICULOUS because they are above the law when it comes to piddly little crimes like speeding.

Some choice quotes from our heroes in blue:

She a disgrace to the badge and to all Leo. Don't forget she might need back up one day and an officer just might the one to back her up. Lol don't burn bridges

I don't think it matters what agency or who the other officer is. That's just jacked up. If I were that trooper I would at least give courtesy to another brother or sister in blue.

Sir,

I apologize for the citation you received. Under NO, and I mean, NO circumstances do I write a fellow LEO. Hell, I even let off NJ or NY visitors who have a badge indicating their relative is an LEO. ANY LEO will be granted a break, even if they act offensively, which I have never encountered. LEO's are polite, and unnecesssarily apologetic. You speed, SO WHAT. YOU will be held responsible for any results. LEO's are trained on driving techniques. Those on this site stating troopers are taught to write fellows LEO's ARE LYING. I WAS THERE. Every profession has 1 or 2 idiots who don't understand we are PROFESSIONALS and will grant LEO's the respect they deserve. Again, sir, I apologize for the childish actions of another.

This one is lovely. A trooper who knows the trooper who wrote the ticket spoke up defending her.

This is a response to that person:

Yourself and Tpr. Smith are pieces of crap. I'm glad that my zone partners aren't as stubburn as you two. I could care less if an LEO is doing 170 mph on the 821, they will get away with a warning. I'll let them learn how to drive more responsibly on their own. I didn't get this job to police the police and I am not a supervisor.

The mentality of these people kill me, like speeding is some kind of felony or something. Yea, I am a trooper and I do know the dyke in question and I have never written another cop, with the exception of crashes, in my way too long of a career. There are more than enough jack bag civilians out there that need my attention to worry about the occasional cop that I stop. Get a grip on yourself.

What a lovely group of assholes, but I'm sure they're just misunderstood and are really good men and women just looking out for our well being.

Bonus - It's not just the US where cops can be douchebags. A man had his home raided in Norway for using cash to pay for a large purchase

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

More on whether the warrentless entry to a Sarasota FL apartment by a federal marshal was legal or not:

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130722/COLUMNIST/130729895/0/MULTIMEDIA?p=all&tc=pgall&tc=ar

 

From the article:

But was that armed police entry illegal? Don't cops need a search warrant? Isn't a woman's apartment her castle?

The answer has many maybes.

A Sarasota lawyer emailed me to insist that was an illegal entry, flagrant and simple. But the more I have read — and after asking the past president of the Sarasota County Bar, Derek Byrd — the more that became unclear.

Byrd says it sounds improper, and may well have been. But the big argument would be about why police thought a suspect was in that apartment.

Wiggins told me he came to the complex on a tip — no details given as to the source — that a serious felony suspect was there somewhere. Only when one vest-wearing cop looked and aimed his gun through one apartment window, and Goldsberry screamed and ducked and then refused to open the door, did police decide that must be the place.

But the fugitive being sought was a man, and a thinking officer might have calmly said — through the door — “Ma'am, sorry we scared you. Please just call 911 and give your address. Ask them to confirm that we are police, OK? There are about two dozen of us out here, and we are looking for a bad guy we think is in your neighborhood. Take your time, we'll wait.”

Instead, Wiggins soon opened the door and pointed his gun and blinding light at the people inside and yelled cursing commands loudly during a gun-to-gun standoff.

Was there justification for that extremely dangerous act?

What do y'all think?

[Sturn]

Wait, in your opinion, why would DAs automatically be negatively disposed towards police? And one would think that the disparity in sentence times between police and other members of the public would pretty heavily show that judges are biased towards the police.

To be clear, I mean defense attorneys (not district attorneys). Police are the classic adversary of defense attorneys doing their day-to-day job. To make defense attorneys' the arbiters of police conduct is like telling a member of Manchester City accused of beating up a hooligan that his jury will all be made up of members of Mancherster United.

That is why I've suggested magistrates/judges looking at police conduct complaints. You want people who can be unbiased while ruling only on the law. Well, that's their job.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

I've worked as a cop for 20 years and I've never seen this happen. Strange. There are policies that dictate what to do. Is it possible a corrupt cop is doing this without other good cops knowing? Sure. You are applying what a few corrupt police may do to all police in your sentence.

It's funny. There's a ton of stuff that I can find dozens of videos on at a minutes notice that somehow you've managed to never see in 20 years.

[Sturn]

There aren't enough actual stories to talk about, so today I present the bargain bin. Pick your police abuse/crooked cop story for the low low price of nothing:

2) The owner of a smoke shop was arrested on drug charges, and then cleared of charges when his surveillance cameras showed a police informant (used in several other drug cases) planting cocaine in his store that the cops used to arrest him.

I agree, horrendous behavior on all accounts except #2. It was the informant who was horrendous in #2, not the police. The only thing you might accuse the police of doing wrong was not properly vetting informants, whom by their nature are dishonorable characters.

Here is a quote from the article linked in #2:

He spent the weekend in jail before he could come up with the $30,000 bond. When he realized what he was being accused of, he had investigators examine his surveillance system, which was among the items seized in the raid. When they did, the charges against Andrews were dropped and the informant himself was sought on drug and perjury charges. The informant, who is not being identified, remains at large.

The only other thing I could fault is the police could have worked through the weekend and downloaded the video, not let it wait until Monday, so the guy didn't sit in jail longer.

Without reading the article you might assume the police had told the informant to go plant evidence.

4) And Sturn is right, not all cops are bad. The good ones just get fired when they complain about the system, like this guy who was fired for speaking out against arrest and ticket quotas.

Your sentence seems to make the statement that all good police are getting fired for being good. Not the case. When good cops complain about something bad and it gets corrected, it most often never gets media attention. These incidents may not be shared and the media prefers reporting cops-doing-bad stories over good anyway.

[Sturn]

It's funny. There's a ton of stuff that I can find dozens of videos on at a minutes notice that somehow you've managed to never see in 20 years.

So Tormund, you are assuming it must be that I'm either lying or blindly stupid? Thanks. You found, "dozens". There are over 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the US. I work for one of those.

eta: And I will say again, I've never seen (with my eyes, where I work) what you said is happening. If you go re-read the posts I never said that it doesn't happen. I took issue with you making a blanket statement like this practice happens everywhere.